Craft-Bamboo Racing’s James Nash is aiming for a consistent weekend in the TCR International Series at Spa-Francorchamps, with the Brit carrying 10 kg of success ballast at the Belgian track.
Brit Nash was eighth fastest in the morning’s first practice session, before following it up with sixth in second practice, with both sessions taking place under clear blue skies.
Although Nash admits that he would rather get progressively faster over the weekend, he also says that he and the team haven’t given their all just yet.
“We haven’t put everything on that we’ve got, so we haven’t run new tyres yet, and I think maybe some of the others have,” said Nash to TouringCars.Net. “I’m more of a step-by-step driver, rather than Pepe [Oriola] or [Stefano] Comini, who go for the first laps.
“I’ve got more ballast on than my team-mates and the other SEATs, so that affects me as well. I think we’re there or thereabouts; as long as I’m inside the top eight then I’m happy.”
Nash added that whilst carrying 10 kg of success ballast, for being the third most successful driver last time out in Estoril, didn’t affect him too much in practice, he believes it could be an issue in the races.
“Over one lap, less so,” said Nash when asked about the effect of the weight. “But over a race distance it makes a big difference; in the last four or five laps at Estoril [the tyres] were going off quite quickly, so the lead that I had, and I knew I had to build that lead quickly, I knew it would be eaten into at the end.”
Unlike some drivers in the field, Nash has previous experience racing at the 7 km Spa-Francorchamps circuit, having competed at the track in 2014 and 2015 when he was racing GT machinery.
Despite that experience, Nash added that he felt it was actually harder to race a front-wheel drive touring car on the limit at the track.
“I’ve not raced here in touring cars, only in GTs. I did the Spa 24 hour and finished third in my first year in 2014. In 2015 my team-mate crashed out.
“My track knowledge is good, it’s just that every car you drive around Spa has a different feeling. You know where you’re going, but the feeling behind the car is something else. It’s more lairy [in a TCR car] – there’s more oversteer and the cars are a lot looser in the rear to help with the rotation in the slower corners, so you’ve got a handful of opposite lock most of the time through the fast turns.
“It’s more challenging to drive and more edge-of-the-seat stuff, whereas in GT3 you just had to trust that the car was going to go through the corners. Having not done F3 and some aero-stuff, that’s where my downfall was in GTs – trusting the car.
“It’s going to be difficult [to score podiums], but that’s always my aim. I want to carry on having a podium each weekend, and so far we’ve had three out of four races, so it would be nice to get another one.
“Certainly in Bahrain we had the best of it and it will only get harder from now on. We’re going to have bumps, knocks and pushes and we’ve just got to stay out of it.
“If we’re only capable of an eighth we’ve got to accept it, not try and barge our way through to seventh and have a DNF. It’s about being sensible.”